Would he have worked inside the American studio system of the 1930's
and 40's, director Harald Reinl would have left hardly an impact on film
history, since many of his films are series films, nearly all are genre
pieces (with genres as diverse as Heimatfilm, war film, Western,
murder mystery, straight horror and even documentary) and on a budgetary
level, they would be considered B-movies (compared to Hollywood's A-budgets
that is).

However, in Germany, where Reinl made most of his films, there
is no distinction between As and Bs, films are merely judged by the money
they make at the box-office ... and in Germany, for a while in the 1960's,
Reinl's films reigned supreme, effortlessly outdoing Hollywood's A-output.

The
way Reinl first came into contact with the movie world though was a
curious one: In Stürme über dem Mont Blanc/Avalanche from
1930, he was the stunt double for Leni Riefenstahl (then a popular actress
and still a few years away from Triumph of the Will), soing her
skiing scenes. Reinl doubled her again a year later in Der Weisse
Rausch/The White Flame. Both films where directed by Arnold
Fanck, a pioneer of alpine filmmaking.

Essentially, Reinl got these parts
because he, born in 1908 in Bad Ischl, in the Austrian Alps, has been
skiing for all of his life and has become a quite good skier (he would
eventually become a success in downhill and ski jumping competitions,
too).

In 1932, Reinl started to work behind the camera, being
assistant director of another alpine/skiing adventure, Abenteuer im
Engadin/Slalom, and then ... nothing. It seems, for the next
few years, Reinl has lost all his interest in the film world, instead he
became a doctor of the law, but instead of following this line of
profession, he founded a skiing school in France ...

It isn't
until 1939 that Reinl films again, this time he co-directs the
documentaries Wilde Wasser and Osterskitour in Tirol with
Guzzi Lantzschner, both are produced by Leni Riefenstahl, by now a
household name as a filmmaker. It was also Riefenstahl who hired him as
assistant director for her mammoth project Tiefland/Lowlands,
which wasn't finished until 1944 and which effectively prevented Harald
Reinl from being drafted for service in World War 2.

It isn't
until 1949 though that Harald Reinl directs his first feature film,
Bergkristall, an alpine melodrama that is considered as one of the first Heimatfilme
(Heimatfilm = a conservative rural melodrama - or comedy - often set in
mountainous regions that is very specific to German speaking countries) of
the post war era.

As the film, and the genre as such, became an
unexpected hit, Harald Reinl soon found himself directing more of the same
ilk, titles include Nacht am Mont-Blanc/Night to Mont-Blanc
(1951), Hinter Klostermauern/The Unholy Intruders, Der Herrgottschnitzer von
Ammergau (both 1952), Der Klosterjäger/The Monastery's Hunter
(1953), and a trio of films that turned Christine Kaufmann into the most
popular German child-star of her time, Rosen-Resli/Rose-Girl
Resli, Der Schweigende Engel (both 1954) and Ein Herz
schlägt für Erika (1956).

On the set of Rosen-Resli, Reinl
also met the woman who would later in 1954 become his wife, the then
unknown actress Kätherose Derr alias Rose Dor, who would soon become one
of West Germany's most successful actresses under the name of Karin
Dor, and who would repeatedly pop up in Reinl's films until their divorce in
1968 [Karin Dor bio - click here].

In 1955, Reinl did his first film away from the Heimat-genre, Solange
Du lebst/As Long as You Live, a heroic drama about the Spanish
Civil War, but after that film ran into trouble with the censors, Reinl
retreated to the genre he knew best, the Heimatfilm. Films included
Die Fischerin vom Bodensee/The Fisher-Girl from Lake Bodensee,
Johannisnacht (both 1956), Die Prinzessin von St.Wolfgang, Die
Zwillinge vom Zillertal und Almenrausch und Edelweiss (all
1957).

With 1958's films U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien/U-47
Lt.Commander Prien and Die Grünen Teufel von Monte Cassino
though, Reinl tried his hand on the war genre, which was on the rise in
Germany following the 08/15 series - and Reinl proved to be
quite a specialist for action scenes. Suddenly he could prove his
cinematic world did not start and end with the mountains he grew up in ...

And since both these films were reasonable successes, this made Reinl a
bankable director, and so when Constantin Film (which produced Reinl's 2
war films) hired the Danish (!) production outfit Rialtoto produce an adaptation of Edgar Wallace's crime novel Fellowship
of the Frog in Germany with an all-German cast, their choice of
director fell on Harald Reinl ... and Reinl delivered: He compensated the
film's shortcomings (German landscapes and actors all desperately trying
to look British - and often failing -, an overconvoluted plot and a
relative lack of logic in the script) with an incredible feeling for eerie
atmosphere, a directorial overview to make the most of what he's got and
an infectuous love for the genre.

The outcome, Der Frosch mit der
Maske/Frøen/Fellowship of
the Frog (1959), would become a tremendous success, and it's hard to
overrate this film's influence on German cinema of the day. Not only did
it lay the foundation for
Rialto's Edgar
Wallace series, which became one of the most successful film series in
German cinema, with 32 entries until 1972 (and a few more in the 1990's) -
and that's only counting the films produced by Rialto, CCC-Filmkunst
and a few other outfits also tried their hands on Edgar Wallace - ot also
marked the start of the German Krimiwelle (= crime movie wave, Krimi
is the German word for crime story, or murder mystery), with most German
Krimis that followed picking up - or trying to pick up - the mood of
Der Frosch mit der
Maske and the Edgar
Wallace films to follow (of which Reinl directed some more).

An odd result of this was that for a time, an incredible number of
German murder mysteries were set in Great Britain (but were not
fimed there). And in the long run, the Edgar
Wallace series would be a forerunner of the Italian giallos (=
a very Italian take on the whodunnit genre, more often than not featuring
a psychopathic serial killer) ...

The male lead of both films was American actor Lex Barker [Lex
Barker bio - click here], a former Tarzan actor who,
with his star in the US fading away, found plenty of work in
genre-movies in Europe. Soon enough, Reinl's and Barker's ways would cross
again, for something much bigger ...

Reinl would stay true to the Krimi-genre with the Italian/Spanish/German co-production Der Teppich des
Grauens/The Carpet of Horror (1962) and Die Weisse Spinne/The
White Spider (1963), both adaptations of novels by crime writer Louis
Weinert-Wilton, and he also made one of the Bryan Edgar
Wallace-films - a series of movies based on the works of Edgar
Wallace's son as a rather blunt attempt to cash in on the Edgar
Wallace seriesby CCC-Filmkunst,
never one slow to jump a bandwagon -, Der Würger von Schloss Blackmoor/The
Strangler of Blackmoor Castle (1963), but Reinl's future - rather
surprisingly - would be away from Krimis ...

In 1962, Rialto,
encouraged by their success with the Edgar
Wallace series, which nobody really thought to be successful
in the first place, decided to take another gamble: To produce a Western -
based on a novel by popular German author Karl May - in Yugoslyvia. Now if
a German Western produced in Yugoslavia might sound weird, the cast would
make it sound even weirder: The lead character of the Apache chieftain
Winnetou was played by Pierre Brice, a handsome Frenchmen who did not look
in the least bit Native American [Pierre
Brice bio - click here], and his German friend Old Shatterhand
would be played by the only American in the cast, Lex Barker ... and this
was a film supposed to be set in America.

Now this is a recipe that spells disaster from square one, yet the
outcome, Der Schatz im
Silbersee/Treasure
of Silver Lake(1962), was nothing short of great ... and that's in no
small part thanks to the film's director, Harald Reinl.

Reinl did not make the mistake to try and imitate the Westerns of John
Ford or such, nor did he try to make a (then fashionable) psychological
Western. Der Schatz im
Silbersee was closer to the American B-Westerns from a decade or
two earlier, but Reinl gave the whole film more of an adventure film touch
which uses the romantic flair of the scenic Yugoslavian settings - which
do not look particularly Old West-like -, to give the film a
certain romantic, atmosphere, and thus gave the film a fairy tale-like
aura all of its own. The cheesy but catchy soundtrack by Martin Böttcher
and of course the actors who are easily distinguishable between good
(Pierre Brice, Lex Barker, Karin Dor, Götz George) and bad (Herbert Lom
at his villainous best) of course also helped in creating this film's
atmosphere of a boys' adventure novel come to life ...

Der Schatz im
Silbersee/Treasure
of Silver Lake might have been a gamble to produce, but it was an
enormous success at the box office, the most successsful German film so
far and the most successful film of its year, easily outselling
competition from abroad (including American Westerns). To noone's real
surprise, Rialto
decided to turn the film into a series, one that would be even more
successful than their Edgar
Wallace series - and thus, the Winnetou-series
was born.

Soon enough, Harald Reinl was brought back to Yugoslavia to film Winnetou
I/Apache Gold
(1963), and with him were of course most of the cast and crew, including
of course Pierre Brice and Lex Barker in the leads. Winnetou
I is a prequel to Der Schatz im
Silbersee (in a time before that word even existed), as it details
the first encounter of Apache cieftain Winnetou (Pierre Brice) and his
white (still German) friend Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker), with the
villainy handled by Mario Adorf.

Like Der Schatz im
Silbersee, Winnetou
I was a smashing success, and arguably it was even better than its
predecessor, so it was of little surprise that Reinl would direct Winnetou II/Last of the
Renegades - the story of Winnetou's one true love Ribanna (Karin Dor)
- the following year, with Anthony Steele as main villain, Klaus Kinski
as one of his henchmen, and a very young Terence Hill (as Mario Giorotti)
as the man who gets Karin Dor in the end. In 1965, Winnetou III/Desperado Trail
- in which Winnetou dies - with Rik Battaglia as the baddie would follow.

These two films were of the same high quality as Der Schatz im
Silbersee and Winnetou
I, but the series as such - in films not directed by Harald Reinl
- would rapidly deteriorate.

First came Old Shatterhand, directed by Hollywood veteran Hugo
Fregonese. This film, a rather blunt attempt to jump the Winnetou-bandwagon
by Artur Brauner's CCC-Filmkunst
by finding a legal loophole and producing a Winnetou-film
with Rialto's
main stars Pierre Brice and Lex Barker and their beloved sidekick Ralf
Wolter, had more in common with Hollywood-Westerns but was a continent
away from Reinl's fairytale-approach.

Rialtoitself meanwhile tried to side Winnetou with a new white friend, Old
Surehand, played by Stewart Granger. The 3 resulting films, Unter Geiern/Among
Vultures (1964, by Alfred Vohrer [Alfred
Vohrer bio - click here]), Der Ölprinz/Rampage at
Apache Wells (1965, by Harald Philipp) and Old
Surehand/Flaming Frontier (1965, by Alfred Vohrer) did miss Reinl's fairytale approach and
feel for the genre though, and the success of these films was steadily
decreasing.

In 1965 though, Harald Reinl did do another Western, for small-time
production outfit International-Germania-Film, Der
letzte
Mohikaner/Last of the Mohicans, starring Anthony Steffen as
Hawkeye and Dan Martin as Uncas as well as Joachim Fuchsberger and Karin
Dor (both fixtures of the Edgar
Wallace series by the way, with whom Reinl has worked on
numerous occasions). The choice of Reinl as director can't have been
coincidental, since the film was, more than anything else, a thinly
disguised attempt to cash in on the Winnetou-series,
with Hawkeye and Uncas standing in for Old Shatterhand and Winnetou - a
rather ironic choice, since James Fenimore Cooper's tales about Hawkeye
were Karl May's main inspiration for writing his Winnetou novels in the
first place ...

Reinl once again, and on a tighter budget, manages to create his trademark
fairytale or young boys' adventure like atmosphere, making this another ok
German Western. Only the dream-team of Pierre Brice and Lex Barker is
sadly missing and at times, the lack of budget does show ...

In 1966, Artur Brauner's CCC-Filmkunst
hired Harald Reinl once again, to do a (for their standards) big budget
film, the 2-parted Die Nibelungen (Die Nibelungen 1.Teil -
Siegfried von Xanten [1966] and Die Nibelungen 2.Teil - Kriemhild's Rache
[1967]),
based on the famous German legend from the Dark Ages, which was previously
(in 1924) filmed by Fritz Lang. The outcome is a naive, romantisized,
simplified and at times downright cheesy duo of films, that of course
pales in comparison to Fritz Lang's adaptation, but taken by its own
merits they are still well-crafted and enjoyable. Herbert Lom, Karin Dor,
Mario Giorotti/Terence Hill and sport star Uwe Beyer as Siegried would
star.

In 1967, Harald Reinl made his (arguably) best film, Die
Schlangengrube und das Pendel/Castle of the Walking Dead,
his only excursion into straight-forward horror, starring Reinl regulars
Lex Barker and Karin Dor and British import and horror star Christopher
Lee. The story, only allegedly based on The Pit and the Pendulum by
Edgar Allan Poe, is silly to the hilt, but in the film, Reinl proves an
unexpected skill in creating a genuine macabre atmosphere and a
directorial inventiveness that nobody ould have expected of him, who in
other films only seemed to be a very gifted craftsman. But taken on its
own merits, Die
Schlangengrube und das Pendel is comparable to the works of other
horror greats of its time like Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda or Jess Franco
(his 1960's horror-output exclusively).

Unfortunately though, the film was not a success, it hardly made a
ripple in the flood of horror films which were released back then, and
only now it seems to be (slowly) rediscovered by genre- and filmfans from
around the globe. Sadly enough, Reinl never did return to the horror genre
...

In 1968 though, Harald Reinl did make a return to the Winnetou-series
with the film Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der
Toten/In the Valley of the Death, which was produced by CCC-Filmkunst
in an effort to revive the series that was begun by Rialto
... and thus they hired not only Reinl to give the film the proper look,
but also Pierre Brice, Lex Barker, Ralf Wolter, Eddi Arent and Karin Dor,
as well as composer Martin Böttcher, to make it seem just like in the
good old days ...

But unfortunately, the good old days were gone, and were not
likely to come back for this film, mainly for two reasons: First off, the
script was little more than a rehash of Reinl's classic Winnetous, but as a whole
seemed rather muddled compared to the earlier films. And secondly, in the
six years since Der Schatz im
Silbersee, much water ahs run down the river: The time saw the
emnergence of the Spaghetti Western, and with it, the genre was changed
forever, for better or worse, and suddenly a fairytale-like
Western/adventure seemed almost anachronistic. Even upon its release, Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der
Toten seemed like a reminder of a by-gone, maybe better time ... but
that said, it couldn't hold up to the classic movies, Der Schatz im
Silbersee and Winnetou I, II
and III, so why watch an inferior imitation ?

However, it came worse: With the late 1960's, German movie business
was rapidly changing, the once so popular Krimis - in which Reinl
excelled - failed to pull the audiences they once did, the viewers these
days demanded more violence and sleaze, thanks to the Spaghetti Western
the Western genre has gotten a lot more violent since Reinl's triumph with Der Schatz im
Silbersee in 1962, then there was the emerging new wave of
German filmmakers, Rainer Werner Fassbinder being the most prominent of
them, who dismissed Opas Kino (grandpa's cinema), of which Harald
Reinl, despite his technical brilliance, was a representative. And then,
in 1970 a film came out that would (rather unexpectedly) take the title
most successful German film away from Der Schatz im
Silbersee and would set the tone for the next 10 years or so of
German moviemaking. The film's title was Der
Schulmädchenreport/Schoolgirl
Report, directed by Ernst Hofbauer, and the many sequels and
rip-offs that followed that film would put the whole rip-off-industry of
the 1960's to shame.

For some reason or another, Reinl did not
see his future in either sex or violence, so to keep working, he would
find himself directing a few very light (and not particularly good)
comedies, like Dr.med.Fabian - Lachen ist die beste Medizin/Dr.Fabian:
Laughing is the Best Medicine (1969), Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am
besten (1971), and two entries into the very weak Die Lümmel
von der ersten Bank-series, Pepe, der Paukerschreck/Pepe:
His Teacher's Fright (1969, part 3 of the series) and Wir hau'n die
Pauker in die Pfanne/We'll take Care of the Teachers (1970,
part 5).

But at least in 1970, he also found time to direct one project
dear to his heart: Erinnerungen an die Zukunft/Chariots of the
Gods, a documentary based on the works of Erich von Däniken.
Eventually, he would even do a sequel to this film in 1977, Botschaft
der Götter/Mysteries of the Gods ... from today's somewhat
jaded point of view though, both this films might be nothing more than a
laugh riot.

None of
these films was as successful (or as good) as most of Reinl's 1960's
output.

In the late 1970's, the German filmindustry seems to
have all but forgotten Reinly, safe from above-mentioned Erich von
Däniken-documentary and ... und die Bibel hat doch recht
(1977), another rather far-fetched documentary, about facts of the
bible.

1982, Harald Reinl directed his last feature film, but
this one is hardly worth mentioning: Im Dschungel ist der Teufel los/Crazy
Jungle Adventure, an adventure comedy designed to highlight
then-popular German teen-stars Thomas Ohrner and Jenny Jürgens. It's sad
to see a skilled director like Harald Reinl depart the film business with
an unimportant film like this, but somehow the film mirrored the state of
the German film industry, which at the time the movie was produced was
breathing its last ...

Harald Reinl's private life met a tragic
end in 1986: In their house on Tenerife, Spain, he was stabbed by his
third wife (he divorced Karin Dor in 1968), the Czech actressDaniela Maria Delis, who was a chronic alcoholic and at the time of
the crime was heavily intoxicated.

In
all, Harald Reinl might never have been a visionary like Fritz Lang was,
and his films might hardly qualify as art, but his films would invariably
be well-crafted pieces of (genre) cinema, with traces of greatness
occasionally shining through. And for some years in the early 1960's, his
films reigned supreme at the German box office.